Apple to Samsung: If You Want to Copy Us, Think Environment

We’ve seen a lot of shots taken at Apple in advertising by the competition, and usually there’s not even an acknowledgement from Apple—until this morning, that is. Several people reported seeing a full-page ad from Apple in their local newspapers, as shown below in a tweet from @DavidMcClelland.

This appears to be the latest in a series of environmentally focused moves from Apple, starting with the new section of Apple.com we saw yesterday as well as the tour given to Wired Magazine’s Steven Levy.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has also mentioned several times that his company's efforts to be more transparent about working conditions in its supply chain, as well as its many, many environmental initiatives, is one are that he hoped his competition would copy.

This is lame. Only the membrers of the Cult of Apple buy into all this bullsh*t about apple having an ownership right to basic design approaches and obvious, trivial software solutions.

Samsung, HTC, Motorolla, and Sony have done amazing things for smartphones the past 4 years. What has apple done? Brag endlessly about an unimpressive, underused 64bit chip? Apple is now the follower, its time for them to catch up to Samsung and HTC.

Your Loyal Followers are gonna buy your over-priced, underperforming mobile hardware *anyway* apple. For the rest of us, putting ads out like this just strengthens our impression that you have your heads way up your asses.

Make things that are actually worth our money and you wouldn’t have to look so whiny through these lawsuits. If you’re a company that’s really so concerned about the environment, then make products which we don’t need to replace every 2 years.
Come to think of it, we really don’t need to buy them. That should help the environment and surely you will be very pleased, right?

I could care less about what droid followers iOS folks or anyone else thinks about but the very fact a few have commented here, negatively no less (no real surprise there) is interesting to me. Phones are electronic devices, like really, in the grand scheme of things who cares?

The comments are pretty bias and seem contradictory since all the device manufacturers WANT all of us to have to upgrade constantly otherwise they can’t remain profitable.

No, the irony is that Apple needed to paint the entire page of some news paper with color ink to bluff their “eco-friendly” advertisement. Apple had a big problem with California state law few years ago for making smartphones not meeting the requirements for recycling.

Oh, go suck it, Apple. The production process for almost every part of a smartphone is inherently not green. You’re one to talk, especially with your bs proprietary cables. How many of your old chargers and craptastic cheap white headphones are piled up in landfills? Not to mention being the worst company in terms of releasing devices in quick succession. You are about money, image, profiting off the technologically-inept, proprietary hardware, and closed software. Don’t pretend you care about the environment. You don’t. Your users might (think they do), buying into your phony image, but that doesn’t really say much. Samsung even beat you to green(er) packaging, because you’d never sacrifice even the smallest part of your bs facade for the environment, would you? No, you wouldn’t. Go home.

Cognitive science demonstrates that so long as a brand is the subject of any conversation—whether good or bad conversation—it’s advantageous to the brand.

Apple haters don’t seem to get this foundational tenet to free advertising and bringing legitimacy to a company. The greater the pushback, the more Apple benefits. The less attention a company receives, the less relevancy that company enjoys.

The problem for haters is that without the hate, they too become irrelevant.
Says something, doesn’t it?

Good comment, Blissmonkey. Very true. And sorry I never got back to your other post about the 5C. Very busy with a new job. Good points about the color scheme. I do think teenagers have a different perspective than us old folk (assuming you aren’t a teen).

Looks like the fandroids are at it again. Wasting their time on an Apple site spewing their lies like their butt buddies ScamScum. Just like they waste their time with inferior products from a company that flat-out lies about its sales figures.

You could be right about the teen/colour thing. And yes, I must count myself as one of the old folk army

Now I get it, Blissmonkey!! Given your spelling of colour and flavour, you must be British!! Everyone knows the British have bad taste in color schemes!! And your dislike of Apple’s ‘premium’ plastic obviously comes from Sir Jony’s pronunciation of ‘aluminum’ which, by the way, even some of us Americans enjoy hearing him say!!

I am, of course, joking!! I mean no offense!! Some of my best friends are from ‘over the pond.’

There are a number of us here who compute with bifocals, including me.

Add me to that list now, Lee!! 46 years old and now wearing some sort of ‘progressive’ lens that lets me see far, near, and close!! I must say, I enjoy them a lot more than contact lenses with constant reading glasses off and on, and neither working well for computer distance and reading music.

Kelly, thanks for the story, and the inevitable flash of comments. Apple and you must be doing something right.

Interesting that haters are posting here rather than notifying Apple directly of their perceived shortcomings. But then, vitriol indicating you have emotional issues with Apple probably doesn’t inspire Cook and company to make the changes you desire.

First reply is to John Smith 1. Most of my relatives and friends have ditched their Droids because the Droids were the “underperforming mobile hardware.” They got sucked into the sales reps telling them they didn’t need to pay for those “overpriced” iPhones. “Why do you need an iPhone” is the first sentence when you go in and as for one. Well, months into the contract they understand why they need an iPhone, but now have to suffer until the contract is up.

Second reply to Bill Hickman who said “make products which we don’t need to replace every 2 years.” You don’t NEED to replace it ever 2 years, most of us WANT to. BIG DIFFERENCE. And we give our old phones to friends, relatives or neighbor’s who wipe and rebuild them to use for another 2 years! My brother in law was given his son’s 2010 iPhone 4 (not even 4s) and he’s happy with the performance of it. There is no “need to,” update in reply to your jab, Apple’s folks enjoy buying the latest greatest stuff and we often generous giving our “old” stuff that works just fine to someone else who’s thrilled to get it.

More for John Smith, a quote from Tim Cooke from his quarterly report. Looks like creating loyal Droid followers is tougher:
“... I think it’s important to point out that if you look at some of the numbers we’re seeing on first-time iPhone buyers…People that bought the iPhone 4s: 85 percent were first-time iPhone buyers. And the 5c: 69 percent first-time iPhone buyers. So these are extraordinary, and as you would expect, these are also heavily Android-switchers. 62 percent of the people that bought the 4s switched from Android. 60 percent of the people that bought the 5c switched from Android. And, y’know, so we’re incredibly pleased with this.”